


Mating Dance

by RembrandtsWife



Category: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alien Sex, Birds, Ecology, M/M, Mating Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:44:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3870817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The work of the Jedi is not limited to diplomacy and fighting; they also make unique contributions to ecological conservation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mating Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2000, around the time that my avian life partner Rembrandt the cockatiel entered my life. Inspired by and dedicated to the people who dance with cranes.

"It's a good thing neither of us is afraid of heights."

My master just nodded. I could tell from the look on his face and from the stirring in our bond that he was sensing out the Force-currents around us, communing with the Living Force in a way in which I still could not and suspected I never would. Best just to wait for him to finish.

After a moment he came and sat down beside me on the rocks, tucking his robes and his cloak under his legs so that nothing would flap in the ceaseless wind. He had braided back his hair, too, and I had tucked my padawan's lock into my tunic, so that we wouldn't disturb the shaulamir when they arrived.

"We don't have many missions like this one," I observed. My master did not answer immediately. He sat still, hands in his lap, and blended in with the landscape--the bare rocky tip of a massive mountain, graced with the eyrie of a rare and precious avian. He became as stable as the mountain itself. Myself, I felt as restless as the winds that swept the peak, contemplating what we were here to accomplish.

"When I was a padawan, Master Yoda and I went on many missions relating to ecological conservation and restoration." I was surprised to hear him say this --reminiscences of times past are the last things you'll get out of Qui-Gon Jinn in conversation. I made sure I was paying attention. "And when I first took a padawan, I continued to do so--Marjatta wanted that kind of training. She would have done splendidly in the AgriCorps and been quite happy there, but the Council was not going to let anyone so Force-strong become anything but a knight."

I would have liked to ask him why he stopped doing this kind of mission, but I rather thought I knew the reason. And I wasn't going to spoil the moment by mentioning the name of a selfish, power-hungry, treacherous former padawan who probably thought it was beneath him to preside over the mating of an endangered species of avian.

The shaulamir of Ethriss are related to the Ethriski people as lower primates are to us humanoids. Highly intelligent yet not quite sentient, sharing more than 70% of their DNA with the sentient Ethriski, they have been by turns revered, hunted, exploited, studied, and finally almost destroyed. It's only during my lifetime that the Ethriski have come to realize what they'd be missing if they let the shaulamir die out and have sought ways to preserve the species. Protective laws and environmental restoration have preserved the few remaining specimens, but it hasn't increased their numbers significantly. Healthy, fertile shaulamir are simply neglecting to mate, and no one is quite sure why.

It was nearly a year ago that they first contacted the Jedi, asking if we could do anything to help. It's taken this long to figure out a plan that might work.

Maybe.

I look over at my master, who looks as serene as ever. With his hair bound back, his face seems harsher, despite its peaceful expression; its rugged contours remind me of the rocks up which we climbed. A transport took us more than halfway up the mountain; the climb which remained taxed even my abilities. Yet Qui-Gon doesn't seem winded or weary. He simply _is_ , present to the moment, like the very bones of the planet. How I envy him that. In the ancient days, Jedi fate-readers would have called him a man of earth and water, and me a creature of air and fire --and they would have been right, on the level of metaphor. Perhaps that's why we complement one another so well, because between us we form a complete circle of the elements.

A touch on my sleeve brought me back to the present. "Here they come."

I have been on a hundred worlds and seen more life-forms, sentient and otherwise, than most people can imagine, but it was impossible not to be awed by the sight of the shaulamir in flight. The Ethriski are a very tall race--Qui-Gon's head comes up to the shoulder of an Ethriski female's, and I converse with where their navels would be if they had any--the shaulamir are about as tall as Qui-Gon, with the wingspan of a small fighter ship. The sun shining through those wings turned the pale grey feathers into rainbows, into a kind of living stained glass.

The two shaulamir were indeed male and female, as we had hoped. They occasionally form same-sex pairings which carry out the courtship routines, build nests, even lay infertile eggs if they are female. Those pairings had become all too common of late. But the one with the striking rose-colored crest and the pink beak to match was the male, and the crestless one with the deep blue beak was the female.

I started to get up, of course, but my master kept hold of my sleeve. "Wait."

I settled down again, breathed in the Force and breathed it out, tried to ground myself in the rocks like my teacher. The great birds had landed now and were bending their long, sinuous necks to browse for insects in the low growth and lichens on the brown rocks.

"They're beautiful," I said. A rare smile lit up my master's face.

"Very beautiful." I could feel his joy at a task which had nothing to do with touchy monarchs, pontificating prelates, self-important bureaucrats, or hypocritical politicians. It had to do with Life.

We watched them for a long time. Each time they lifted a foot, the long toes curled under, contracting fully at the highest point of the step, and then unfolded again like the petals of a flower as the foot descended towards the ground. They carried their heads on their long necks more gracefully than the most skilled dancer and had a grace which the stateliest Jedi could not match. Again and again their feathers shook off rainbows as one grasped a plume in its long narrow bill and nibbled carefully and thoroughly from the quill to the tip. And their eyes were the most astonishing deep blue color, intense as the blue crystals that power my lightsaber, more intense even than Qui-Gon's eyes.

Eventually my master sighed. /I think we shall have to assist,/ he said, mind to mind. /Follow my lead, Obi-Wan./

We did exactly as we had rehearsed. We took off our robes, our boots, and everything but our undertunics and leggings without getting up. The shaulamir watched us, each bird turning first one blue eye toward us, then the other, then blinking so slowly one could see the grey lid sweep across the glistening surface of the eye.

Qui-Gon stood up, and so did I. The rocks were unexpectedly cold underfoot. He stood for a moment, raising his arms as if spreading wings to the wind, looking around without moving his head. Then he bent and took off his leggings as well so that he was left with nothing but his undertunic and shorts. Shivering in the wind, I did the same.

Walking slowly and silently in a meditative pattern, we circled around the birds, Qui-Gon moving to a position behind the male, I to a corresponding spot behind the female. The shaulamir were still giving us the eye, but only intermittently; they still seemed more intent on searching for food than on anything else. I let my knees and shoulders soften, breathed in the Force, sank into a posture of relaxed standing. Ground and center... although I had a forethought that my airiness might be an asset on this particular mission.

Through our bond I felt my master reaching out to the male shaulamir, seeking to read its state of feeling through the Force. Thinking of Master Yoda's mantra, "There is no try, only do," I did the same for the female.

I was surprised at how easily I made contact with the creature. I sensed that there was something wrong which none of the Ethriski scientists had yet discovered, some damage on a cellular level that was interfering with the normal flow of hormones. This female _should_ have been highly receptive, ready to audition a number of males for the role of mate, yet she seemed strangely indifferent. From my master I got the impression that the male shaulamir had, as it were, forgotten what to do. It no longer knew how to woo a female.

Showing the male how to court was my master's role. Getting the female to be receptive was my role.

When we'd first discussed this mission and begun to train for it, I'd been afraid that at the crucial moment, I would lose my self-control and laugh like a madman. Years of living with my master's dry wit has made my own sense of humor only more erratic and more dangerous, and I have a bad habit of pushing him to make him laugh.

But when Qui-Gon raised his long, muscular arms in a great sweep like the wings of the shaulamir, I had no inclination to laugh. He was as beautiful as the bird he was mimicking; he had _become_ the bird he was mimicking, in some sense. I had to become the female-- I had to enter into her being, through the Force, as wholly as my master had entered into the male's.

Now I understood those questions Master Windu had asked me, in confidence, before we accepted this mission. Finding my master terribly attractive _was_ going to make this easier.

I bent forward from the waist, turning my head to one side in a clumsy approximation of the shaulamir's fluid motions, and stretched my arms along my sides so that the backs of my fingers touched at the base of my spine. I had given the signal, and my master began to dance.

He lowered his arms and raised them again. Three steps to my right. Three steps back to my left. He imitated the birds' walk so precisely that his toes curled and uncurled. He moved without a wobble, his balance flawless. Long long legs, not much different from the birds' except for bending in the other direction, and long arms creating the sweep of the great wings.

The male was watching him, its crest gradually rising so that the pink feathers curved forward over the bird's forehead. Qui-Gon made a deep bow with wings, I mean arms outspread, making his plait fall forward over his skull in approximation of the erect crest.

While he was still bent over, I took three steps closer to him and to the male, balancing my concentration on the Force with my efforts to move my toes properly. When I looked at him again, tilting my head the other way as if surveying him with the other eye, he began the sequence again: A slow flap, the raising of the wings, three steps one way, three steps the other, and a bow.

Was it just my imagination, or was there a subtle shift in the female's energies? I reached into her with the Force, coaxed out those hormones, and then went into the first stages of the female's answering dance. Straightening up, I stretched out my neck as haughtily as possible, stuck out my rear, and paced three steps to my left and three steps back to my right, indirectly approaching my master and the birds.

I felt ridiculous, waggling my arse as if it had feathers, but Qui-Gon looked magnificent. I could feel through our training bond that he had a strong bond with the male shaulamir; his sense of himself as Qui-Gon Jinn, human male, Jedi master, was submerged, lost in the desire of the male shaulamir to win his female in the dance. And his efforts were working: The male raised his neck, spread his mighty wings, and began to imitate the dance my master showed.

My female, however, remained heartily indifferent. Her feelings were ruled by her crop, not by her hormones. My little dance of receptivity was not doing her any good; I was going to have to take a little risk. I had to let my own feelings enter the scenario.

I looked at my master and let myself look at him as I had not before. Not as female bird to male bird, not as apprentice to teacher in the Jedi way, but as one sexually mature human to another. Among the Jedi there are no taboos on same-sex relationships, nor even on interspecies relationships, if the partners find themselves compatible. I had long had these feelings for my master, but there was no sign that he had such feelings for me, so I had put them aside. My training was more important than my fantasies.

He was my teacher, my master, my protector, my mentor, my everything. Dear as friends are and even lovers, for master and padawan each to the other is the most important person in the galaxy, as long as the training bond lasts. And sometimes longer.

I looked at the long, powerful arms, the broad shoulders, the magnificent deep chest, and the legs like temple columns. I took a deep breath, did my three steps to the left and three to the right, and let my eyes dwell on the shape of his mouth, the outline of his nipples through his tunic, the soft bulge of his genitals under the shorts. Three steps here and three steps there, I pushed away all thoughts of myself as short and pallid and scrawny and immature, and boldly speculated on what Qui-Gon's considerable penis would look like engorged, how it would feel to be kissed by a man with a beard, whether I could break his control and make him moan as I sometimes made him laugh.

There! The female was following me! Her tail feathers were quivering as she did her little strut. The male danced closer, and Qui-Gon behind him, the two males dancing in synchrony. My master's eyes met my own, and suddenly I realized he must be reading me through the bond, aware of my sexual feelings and images.

A wave of shame hit me--it was like I was fifteen once again and he had walked into my room when I was pleasuring myself, fantasizing about him--but I couldn't stop now, this was working--for the sake of the mission, I had to continue. A detached part of my mind said, with a chuckle, that it wasn't often sex was mandatory on a Jedi's mission, but the rest of me strutted back and forth, shaking my non-existent tailfeathers.

I wasn't at all ready when the bond between Qui-Gon and me lit up with some intoxicating sexual images--and they weren't my own. They were _his_ , his imaginings, and they had plenty of feeling behind them. A view of myself writhing and gasping in pleasure--from the point of view of my master, bending over me with my cock in his mouth. Force help me.... A picture of myself returning the favor, dwelling sensually on the way my lips looked as they tasted his flesh. Oh, Sith.... A picture that wasn't a picture, it was more sound and sensation and _taste_ , of the two of us kissing, and the noises I was making and my fingers were clutching his hair--

The shaulamir were circling each other now, and so were Qui-Gon and I. Circling and circling back, growing closer and closer, the female lifting her tail and letting her wings droop as the male approached her. I caught just a glimpse of pale naked penis emerging from his body as he snuggled up behind her, wings triumphantly raised, and stretched out his neck alongside hers.

Qui-Gon dropped his arms, and I staggered into something like a relaxed stance, our eyes fixed on the birds as they mated. Their long necks entwined, and the male emitted a warbling whine like some sort of saw, which the female answered with short bursts of a low croaking sound. They stood still, conjoined, trembling in unison, for a very long time. They didn't notice when we walked away, silently, to our discarded clothing, and made our way down the mountainside a little before we stopped to dress.

I was more aroused than I had been in ages, maybe more aroused than I had been since the first time I had sex. Not only was my cock throbbing between my legs, I had a desperate urge to be penetrated that had to be the result of sharing the female's feelings; I'd never been wild about anal intercourse, although I liked men just as well as women.Specifically I kept thinking about my master's very large penis penetrating me, which ought to have made me run screaming, but instead I had to restrain myself from lifting my tailfeathers and letting my wings droop, or the human equivalent thereof.

My master didn't say anything as we climbed back down to the plateau where we were to be picked up. He did give me a smile which I knew meant, "Well done." Once we were at the plateau, we shared some water and protein rations we had left there, and then we contacted the Ethriski scientists to tell them we'd succeeded.

The next morning, we were on a ship back to Coruscant--a rather luxurious ship, thanks to the generosity of the Ethriski Shaulamir Society--with promises of follow-up reports and a souvenir: Two primary wing feathers, one from each of the shaulamir whom we had helped. I wondered if we were ever going to talk about it.

The Council were extremely pleased with our report. My master was confident that Jedi healers could repair the damage we had detected and that the birds we had influenced would not only mate successfully but pass on their re-learned knowledge of mating to others of their species. Master Yoda made a backwards speech about how nice it was to see the Jedi working for true peace instead of waging war, and then we finally went back to our quarters and unpacked and had a chance to relax.

"Can I get you anything, master? I'm thinking of making some tea."

"No, thank you, Obi-Wan. I merely need to lie down for a bit and get used to real gravity again." He stretched out on the couch with a sigh.

I made myself a small pot of tea in my favorite soothing blend and went back to the common room, sitting on the hassock as I often did and putting the tray on the low table which stood before the couch. My master appeared to be asleep, although he most likely wasn't.

I sipped my tea and let myself look at him, again, back in the context of our normal environment, our home. He looked tired. I felt tired. He had taken off his outer robe and his boots, but hadn't changed out of his other clothes; only his bare feet reminded me of our mating dance on the mountain top. Large feet with long, elegant toes, if not quite so long and elegant as the toes of a shaulamir. There were faint red imprints on his skin from the pressure of the boots and the weave of his stockings.

The tea was not soothing me as much as I'd hoped. Even here, back in our quarters at the Temple, I found myself thinking about the images he'd shared with me, of us pleasuring one another. Were they really fantasies or desires of his, or only pictures crafted to ensure the success of our mission? How could I tell how much had been real desire between us and how much was due to our union with the minds of the shaulamir?

"You can kiss me," my master said quietly.

I started, sloshing tea out of my cup onto my leggings. At once I rose to clean it up--immediate clean-up was one of my master's rules--but he spoke again.

"Obi-Wan." He turned his head, opened his eyes, and looked at me. "If you want to know the answer to the question you were thinking, you can kiss me."

put down my teacup and came around the table to kneel beside him. His eyes were closed again, and I thought of a children's tale, about the peasant girl who woke the handsome prince from an enchanted sleep with a kiss, for she was his true love. With one hand on the end of the couch and the other on his chest, I bent and kissed him.

His mouth was as warm and as soft as I'd hoped it was, not hard and unyielding as I'd feared. The beard was agreeably soft, too, and the scent of his hair rose around me--he hadn't washed it for a longer time than was usual, yet it didn't smell bad to me, it simply smelled of him. And I liked that smell. I liked it a lot.

I started again when his hand cupped my face. His touch has always been gentle; this was different, not merely gentle. Caressing. And his lips parted, and his tongue flicked lightly against my lips, an invitation.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was kissing him with total abandon, ruthlessly, greedily, I was shamelessly fucking his mouth with my tongue. And he was _taking_ it, arching up against my hand and my mouth, stroking my face and my hair and murmuring, murmuring into my mouth, into the kiss.

I pulled away about two seconds before I would have come in my shorts without being touched, just from the kiss. Qui-Gon looked annoyingly calm, but there was no missing the hard bulge in his leggings. He petted my hair.

"Do you have your answer, Obi-Wan?"

I stretched out on top of him, my head on his chest, and wrapped my arms around his sides. I thought of the shaulamir and the way their necks entwined as they mated. His arms came around me and held me.

"Yes."

We lay there for a long time, holding each other. I was hard, he was hard, but neither of us was in a hurry to move on. Eventually Qui-Gon spoke. I heard his voice with one ear and felt it with the other, the ear that was pressed to his chest.

"The shaulamir have been forming same-sex pairs."

"Yes, I remember," I muttered.

"That would not be a problem if the majority of the population were breeding normally."

I made an affirmative sort of grunt.

Qui-Gon's hand moved to stroke my hair and ran all the way down my back to to my arse. "In some cases, there are wide age differences between the partners. It does not seem to matter."

I raised my head and kissed him again.

I still was in no hurry; I wanted to prolong this as much as possible, to make our mating last longer than that of the shaulamir, to invest it with as much meaning. Qui-Gon seemed to enjoy the slow pace and the way I sometimes led, sometimes backed off and let him lead the kiss. His mouth tasted so good, better than anything I could compare it to. The warmth and the scent of him seemed to soak right through our clothes into my skin.

When I realized he was rubbing his erection against me as much as I was doing the same to him, I hauled myself off of him and got to my feet. "I'd rather it be a bed than a couch. It'd be something of a novelty for me." Smiling, Qui-Gon got up off the couch and took my hand, to lead me into his bedroom.

I don't think I've been in his bedroom more than three or four times, in all the years we've been together. We've slept back to back and stayed in cramped spaces on so many missions that we both treasure the space and the privacy of our own rooms here at the Temple, when we get to enjoy them. I know there were a couple of times when I was injured or ill that he let me sleep with him so he could take care of me more conveniently. The funny thing is that although I was much younger then, the bed didn't look any smaller than I remembered it. It was still huge.

Qui-Gon sat down on the edge of the bed and gathered me onto his lap. Kneeling astride him with my rear on his knees gave me the unexpected thrill of looking down to him, being taller than he was. He raised his mouth to me again and we went back to kissing, having cooled off just a bit while moving from one room to another. In a couple of minutes, though, he lay back and drew me down on top of him, and my hips started moving against his again without consulting me first.

I raised my head and licked my lips, tasting him some more. "I've just realized something."

"What's that?"

"These utility belts are damned uncomfortable."

Chuckling, Qui-Gon reached up and unclasped my belt. I rolled away from him, leaving the belt in his hands, and rolled back and did the same task for him. After the belts it was the tabards, and after the tabards the outer tunics, and after the outer tunics it got pretty frantic, and then we were rolling on that huge bed naked.

We were so eager to touch and feel each other that I didn't think to look right away. After all, I had seen the man naked, in casual ways, thousands of times over the years, but I had never kissed his throat, or run my hands over his bare chest, or sucked on his nipples, or felt his aroused flesh pressing into my belly. I had to do those things and quite a few others before I got around to just looking.

"Force help me," I said, running my hand up and down his shaft, "you almost scare me with this thing." His erect cock was in proportion to the rest of him--that is, it was huge. But like the rest of him, it was beautifully shaped, and the skin stretched over the hard, hot flesh was so soft, so delicate, like paper made out of velvet.

"I hope not, Obi-Wan." The tone of his voice made me look up at him.

"I'm only teasing, m--Qui-Gon." I feared, from the look on his face, that others had said the same and not been teasing.

He leaned down and kissed me. "We don't have to--I don't need to--"

"You will if I want you to," I said firmly, kissed him back, and moved around so I could take him in my mouth.

I never knew until then that I'm mildly synesthetic. He tasted purple and rose and gold, little bursts of color behind my eyes. He tasted like the inside of a hardwood barrel that has aged a very good wine. He tasted like the woodwinds and strings that play the lowest notes, like the deep moans he made in his chest.

I brought him close, but he didn't let me take him all the way. He Force-flipped me very neatly and returned the favor, with a good deal of finesse. I kept my presence of mind just long enough to undo the tie that holds back the sides of his hair so that it would fall over me, tickle my belly and my thighs, and then I collapsed with a groan and let Qui-Gon have his way with me. It was a very thorough and rather virtuoso performance, with him as the player and me as the instrument. My orgasm was a blue-green explosion in the base of my brain.

Ah... I purred into his mouth as he kissed me, letting me taste the combination of his mouth and my come. "So glad you're not inhibited about things like that," I murmured.

"I have been told by some," he said into my ear, using his tongue to articulate the words rather more than he needed to, "that I have no inhibitions at all." He turned his head and nipped my throat. "But I think that's an exaggeration."

"Good," I panted. I couldn't keep still while he was playing with my nipples. " _That_ idea is truly frightening."

Chuckling, he pulled me still closer against him and slipped his cock between my thighs. "Do you want me to, Obi-Wan?"

"You bet I do." His hand closed on one buttock and I thrust back into it.

Quickly I scrambled away and knelt, gathering the cushions under my head and wrapping my arms around them. "Just like this," I demanded. "Just like this, Qui."

"Oh, Force, Obi-Wan." He was biting his lip to restrain himself. Oh, it was such fun making him lose it. "Are you sure?"

I've been told I have a very fine arse. I wiggled it for answer.

Then I screamed when he kissed me there, his tongue running over the sensitive hole. You Hutt-kissing son of a Sith, I thought, giving me no warning like that. A chuckle told me he'd heard that through the bond, but I didn't care; he was pushing his tongue in there and making me too wild to think, and that was fine by me.

I heard the slap of something against skin, not my own, and glimpsed through the bond that the show-off had summoned a bottle of moisturizer from the refresher. If it had been me, I 'd have simply gotten up and fetched it, using my feet to carry me, but I suppose he was too busy tongue-fucking my arse, or maybe this is something they teach in master classes--advanced Jedi sexual techniques. Then I was too busy moaning with every breath to complain any more--he was working the first finger inside me.

I tried to regain enough control to voluntarily relax my muscles, but I wasn't entirely successful. While Jedi training does cover what to do when you're being tortured, they don't teach you how to apply your disciplines when you're being driven mad with pleasure. Qui-Gon was murmuring something I couldn't make out, but I think he was using a little Force-persuasion to make me relax, and that helped. It didn't take long to get three fingers in there, and I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that his cock was going to be longer, thicker, and better. I'd never enjoyed penetration so much.

Finally he took his fingers away and I heard the slick sound of his putting moisturizer on his cock. Thank the Force.... He rubbed the excess into my hips and thighs and then curled one hand around my thigh. "Now, Obi-Wan?"

"Now, Qui, now!"

He _was_ longer and thicker and bigger than three fingers. _Much_ bigger. For a few difficult breaths I was afraid I might just split in two along my spine and fall apart on the bed. Then between one breath and the next, the feeling changed, and it was nothing but pleasure. I'd had that happen before but not so dramatically.

"Oh, yes, master, so good, oh, I want this...." I raised myself on my arms and threw my head back, leaning back into the pressure. His hands slid up my ribs and pulled me back against his chest, and he was so deep, so deep inside me. His hands splayed across my chest, my belly, and I reached up and groped and tugged until I'd pulled a lot of hair down over our shoulders, around my face.

"Shaulamir birds have nothing on us," I muttered.

"You're so tight--tell me I'm not hurting you--"

"Furthest thing from it--" I rocked in his arms, he groaned and bucked up against me. "C'm'on, do it, fuck me!"

I'd wanted to see him laugh. I'd wanted to make him lose control. I'd wanted him to let go and really take me. I hadn't figured on what it would be like if he did--I didn't think about how much power the man would be unleashing. On me. He threw back his head, groaning, hair whipping everywhere, and then--to put it bluntly--he fucked me blind. He had no control, _I_ had no control. I couldn't have done anything to stop it--not that I wanted to. It was hard and fast and mercilessly hard and fast and it went on forever. I loved it. I think I came twice, once without being touched, a second time in his fist. I loved it. I loved him.

Somehow we wound up lying on our sides, spooned together. He was playing with my braid and I was playing with his hair, feeling more than half asleep. Feeling happy and light all through, despite having a man wrapped around me who was a good bit larger and heavier than myself.

"Do the shaulamir mate for life?" I asked drowsily. Qui-Gon kissed my shoulder.

"No. But I do."

"Good. So do I."


End file.
